Remember The Fall

Yáll remember last year, when the Hockey Mom and the Grampa tried to win the White House?

And didn't!

Well, you certainly can remember that Sarah Palin, Alaska's Repugnant Governor, tried to play herself off as the reformanator, who despised earmarks. Remember the Bridge to Nowhere? Remember how folksy she was, sayin, "Thanks but no thanks?" Remember how she said she turned it down? Turned out to be yet another Palin fabrication, or mis-remembrance of things past.

Wink-wink.

Out on the campaign trail, in her borrowed suits she never returned, Sarah kept on insisting that if she were elected vice president, she would lead the charge in Washington against earmarks.
But, uh that was then and this is now, and Sarah is nowhere near being vice-president, thank god. And she is less likely to keep Alaska's wallet closed when it comes to those awful, awful earmarks. See, the spending bill that Obama signed last week includes many of the earmarks that Palin sought.

Go figure. Sarah Palin says one thing and does another.

I'd like yáll to remember this when she crawls out of the frozen north to run again in 2012.
The $410 billion bill has been blasted by Repugs and some Democrats for being loaded with over 9,000 earmarks. You all remember John McCain't raging against the president about the spending bill. "So much for the promise of change!" I think he was referring to the change he was owed at the Starbucks because he only had a Venti, not a Grande.

But I digress.

But back to Palin. Earmarks in the bill are quite generous to Alaska; Alaska will receive more money, per capita, from the bill's earmarks than any other state--some $209.71 for each resident. And one-hundred earmarks in the bill, worth a total of $143.9 million, are tagged solely for Palin's state.
When asked about all these earmarks for Alaska, Palin's mouthpiece, Billy Joe McAllister, pointed the finger at Repug Senator Lisa Murkowski and Repug Representative Don Young as the two responsible for these provisions.

And yet in an email--damn that internet!--Billy Joe noted that a "few of [the Alaska earmarks] were requested directly" by Palin. He declined to say exactly how many and which ones specifically. But that shouldn't come as a surprise. A Repugnant not willing to answer a question truthfully.

Oh the horrors!

The earmarks that Palin apparently will accept include half-a-million bucks for a "heritage center" in the Chilkat Indian Village; $200,000 for researching the king crab; and $855,000 for building fairgrounds. The Alaska earmarks also include $1.2 million for construction work on an airport on Akutan, a tiny island that relies on seaplane for contact with the Alaskan mainland. Akutan has roughly 800 residents. Let's hear it for the Airport to Nowhere.
Whether or not any of these projects is worthwhile--the people of Akutan might actually airport to keep their community alive--Palin is certainly not railing against these earmarks.

Still, it doesn't hurt to remember the fall, last fall, when Palin, in her Lord and Taylor, Repugnant Party suits, tried to ride the anti-earmark train into Washington DC.

Now she looks the other way, asks for earmarks specifically, accepts all the money that comes in, and forgets her past crusade.

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SIDENOTE: The picture I got from Beth's place, the Nutwood Junction. Lots of talk over there about whether or not the picture is real or fake. Turns out Beth did all her homework and it's the real deal.

It is what it is: a brain dead animal and crustacean, with a bear skin on the couch and a crab on the table